A good listen

Do listen to Lewis Wolpert and Peter Atkins and the matey Today presenter whose voice I don’t recognize, talking about the Templeton Prize. It’s just Wolpert and the presenter at first and it’s all quite cozy, with Wolpert agreeing that religion is fine as long as it doesn’t interfere, and saying that he doesn’t know enough about the Templeton Foundation to know if it’s a problem or not. But then at the end Peter Atkins joins in and it becomes a matter of Atkins and Wolpert agreeing while the presenter gets all squeaky in the voice.

“The Templeton Foundation is an insidious foundation which is trying to insert itself into all kinds of rational bodies,” says Atkins.

“But,” the presenter says squeakily, “what’s insidious about it? It’s quite open about it, it’s trying to promote its cause, that’s what any foundation would do, I can’t see what’s insidious about it.”

“It’s trying to undermine rationality,” Atkins replies firmly.

“But,” squeaks the presenter even more squeakily, “but does all religion, does all promotion of religion necessarily undermine rationality?” “Oh, absolutely,” says Atkins, and Wolpert seconds him, with “That’s the whole point of it.”

I can understand Wolpert saying that religions sometimes helps people, since he thinks it really helped his son, and it’s just fine to say that he supports religion as long as religion doesn’t intrude, but this is precisely what religion does, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise. So, Wolpert can’t have it both ways. He can’t simply agree so readily with Atkins, as he does, about religion undermining rationality, and then, at the same time claim that it’s really quite harmless. Especially as this is evidenced by big forces like Templeton money and the huge religious institutions. Wolpert simply shouldn’t be able to get away with this kind of two-faced approach. The presenter might get all squeaky, but Wolpert is the one who gets away with murder.

I listened to the broadcast this morning. The presenter is Evan Davis, who before becoming a presenter for the today program was the BBC’s economics editor. I got the distinct impression the piece was rather hurriedly put together and may have been a last minute substitute for something they had to drop. Davies is normally a better interviewer than in the item in question and I get the impression he had not done much in the way of preparation.

Let’s establish something about Rees and other religious nonbelievers: They are willing to lie. Christianity is not about shared values. It’s about the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You cannot honestly assert that you can abet that belief without promoting it. And what if more scientists were to follow his example? Basically, you’d be enshrining mendacity as a virtue. How can anybody think that’s a good idea? (Heh. Actually, I did not that many years ago, but then I heard the gnus.)

Within here is a good, concise summary of what Dennett means by belief in belief, and he’s got it right.

We can continue to respect the good intentions of those who persist in professing belief in God, but we’ll be doing them a favor if we stop pretending that we respect the arguments they use to sustain these fantasies.

I’d love to know where we’d be if all of the atheists walked out of church.

I haven’t listened to it yet, but going by your description, this is an excellent example of the usefulness of Gnu Atheism (what a sane world would simply call “candid exchange”). Notice how Wolpert starts out all diffident and noncommital. But when Atkins refuses to coddle religion, and calls a spade a spade, all of a sudden Wolpert bucks up and says what he was likely thinking but was too timid to say without feeling there was social and conversational support for him.

This is what I point to when people bleat, “But you’ll never change a religious person’s mind!” That’s not the point. The point is that normalizing the perfectly reasonable sane and obvious statement that religion undermines rationality, and that its institutions have that as their mission, allows people who are less confident or more prone to go-along-to-get-along to have the guts to say what they know is true.

Does anyone doubt that Wolpert (and countless other rational people, were they in his place, as they are all the time) would have remained deferential in the face of the interviewer if Atkins hadn’t opened up that conversational space?

And yes, the more of this that happens, the more peoples’ minds will be changed. It becomes increasingly hard to avoid those nagging doubts about one’s religion when fewer and fewer people provide you a padded intellectual play-pen so you never have to bump into anything sharp.

Absolutely right, Josh. I hadn’t thought of it that way – I’d thought (perhaps prepped for it by having read Jerry’s post and comments on the subject, and thus knowing that Wolpert joined Atkin in the end) that Wolpert was just being neutral or “reasonable”…but of course as you say, that’s exactly the point. The default is always that it’s reasonable or tactful or non-aggressive or any of a thousand things to refrain from saying what Atkin did, and it takes an Atkin saying it to provide a safe zone for other people to say it. It is, of course, the more reasonable thing to say, but one has to be a gnu to see it that way, which is why it’s good to be a gnu. Being a gnu means being self-consciously aware that it’s entirely reasonable to point out that yes, promoting religion does undermine rationality.

That is right on the money. It is just vitally important that things that need to be said are said. It seems to me that it’s inevitable that any coddling of bad ideas, however seemingly inocuous, will always have some downside at some point.

I am reminded of this little piece. Climate change discussed on a light news/panel show out here. At least Tracy Curro got to have her say. (For context; Andrew Bolt is a newspaper columnist of a slightly Bill O’Reilly bent, he’s his own sort of arsehole though, really.)

Usually, I do think of it that way. I scowl and throw things whenever people preface an “admission” of atheism with “of course I respect blah blah blah” as if one simply weren’t allowed to be an atheist without apologizing first.

Does anyone doubt that Wolpert (and countless other rational people, were they in his place, as they are all the time) would have remained deferential in the face of the interviewer if Atkins hadn’t opened up that conversational space?

That’s right, and a good description of what gnu atheism has been trying to do from the beginning—open up “a conversational space.” Sam Harris has spoken in terms somewhat like that about what he was trying to do with The End of Faith. He was trying to make it “OK” for certain (perfectly sane) ideas to be part of the discussion about religion. The problem, as smarter people than myself have pointed out, has always been that the perfectly sane ideas are taboo and the batshit woo woo ideas are the ones that garner near-uniform respect.

Josh makes an excellent point. It is about normalizing straightforward criticism of religion and undermining the social pressure to always show deference to religious belief, changing the social cost of being openly critical of religion. Thanks for pointing that out.

It definitely is something Harris constantly alludes too as well–and is why Sam’s critique of moderate and liberal religionists is so much on target.

Matt – Radio 4’s presenters simply fawn over religion and the religious. Evan will have been panicking over what his controller will tell him for letting religion be “attacked” in a way that risks being used to offend the only part of their audience the BBC cares about – Daily Mail readers.

To be fair to the BBC, they often have to walk on eggshells to avoid giving the tory press an opening to attack them. Tories who want a pretext to sell the BBC to themselves and their friends are like terrorists – they only need to get lucky once.

while I’m sure Mr. Rees will enjoy the benefits of an extra million, by accepting it he has done two things to himself.

1. he will no longer be able to make any statement deemed to be against religion while retaining a shred of credibility

2. anything the templeton puts out there in the form of statements, publicity, pictures, blurb, spin will stay out there for a long, long time to possibly compromise the award winner for years to come.

The templeton doesn’t hand out a million for free….they expect to get value in return. So you may not want to pursue the templeton prize….

I’ll chime in with the agreement on Josh’s point. I think religion is also facing a problem with the internet allowing for such rapid responses to religious namby-pambyism. Try reading the comments at the end of any religious piece on the guardian or huffpo to see that the expectation of deferential respect is simply wishful thinking whenever you allow public comment.

Absolutely. I’ve noted this a few times. It must be an earth-shaking change for them – constantly being confronted, in a matter of minutes, with the holes in their reasoning.

When people in “the reality-based community” have that experience we can simply improve our reasoning. People in the theism-based community don’t have that option. We get an invitation to fix our mistakes; they get an existential threat. Internet good for us, bad for them.

This thread is a little old, but re-reading it I noticed that no one connected Josh’s point @6 to the concept of the Overton Window, which Josh’s point somewhat resembles. Subsequent comments agreeing with Josh are even closer to the Overton concept, I think.